I think it's fair to assume college kids could use this service. However is something like this in their budget? Have you done any research comparing the costs of a service like this to the cost of doing it yourself (or hauling clothes back and forth to the parents house)?
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Maker
@Percival Course Loads is not cheaper than doing your own laundry in the communal dorm laundry rooms (yet), but the prices are equal or cheaper than sending your laundry out; minus the headache of having to lug your clothes to the cleaners and dealing with a subpar customer experience. We will be bringing prices down as we leverage volume to negotiate better rates with our vendor partners. The other thing to note is we are marketing to parents as much as we are to students; think moms who have done their teenager's laundry up until now, and want to ensure their kid's laundry is being done consistently.
P.S. apologies for the delayed response, was celebrating a Jewish holiday (Rosh Hashana). Hopefully you haven't made your pick just yet :-)
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I like the focus on a hypervertical! @founders of @courseload: assume you are really successful with laundry, what would be the next 3 things you could focus on to fulfill your mission to "College life simplified"?
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Maker
Thanks @thomask, and great question. There are three categories of college "needs" that we can potentially tackle:
1) Living Needs (summer storage, laundry, food, dorm room decor/supplies etc)
2) Academic Needs (tutors, textbooks, schedules/calendars)
3) Social Needs (events, parties, social opportunities)
We're focusing on building the logistics engine via Course Loads to potentially power some other offerings down the road.
P.S. apologies for the delayed response, was celebrating a Jewish holiday (Rosh Hashana).
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Maker
I was never able to send out my laundry in school because 3rd party companies were not allowed in the actual dorms. I wanted a super convenient way to have my laundry and dry cleaning delivered directly to my dorm room. The idea has evolved as a platform for vendors to expand their market share.
Can you tell us about revenue and customer numbers so far?
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Maker
@Percival we only soft launched about a week and a half ago (on one campus) with very limited marketing, so the numbers aren't really indicative yet. We have 75 accounts created and about half of those have credit cards on file and are scheduling orders. Only a hand-full have pre-paid for the whole semester, but I believe that is because we need to present the savings of a pre-paid plan better so we are A/B testing that.
@bbzeven Any early indications of customer ACQ costs?
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Maker
@Percival We have not invested a lot into marketing at the moment, so no real indication on CAC yet, but I can tell you it will most definitely be significantly lower than companies serving the general market. One of the advantages of focusing on college campuses is that the market is hyper-local/condensed into a relatively small area. This means ad dollars go further (due to organic virality on campus) and referral incentives work REALLY well. I know this because I previously founded a college based business, and though this is not really data to go on yet, most of the the current users came through referral codes. We offer 10 free pounds to both the referred and referrer, which costs us about $6 per 10 lbs (currently). But to redeem these pounds, the user needs to have a credit card on the account, and at that point it becomes about funnel-tweaking/engagement/drip campaigns to keep them coming back.
What's the competitive landscape like for this? Any large companies or startups already trying this?
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Maker
@Percival There are a decent amount of startups in various cities trying to offer a laundry & dry cleaning service. I don't think any have really mastered the logistics, economics, or even the quality of service (https://twitter.com/search?src=t...). I am sure you've heard of Washio and maybe of Fly Cleaners (the two that have raised the most funding).
So how are we different?
1) In their current state, these competing companies cannot operate in college dorms due to clearance issues, which means a major convenience component is lost: the door-to-door service. We bypass this by hiring/contracting Campus Reps, who are current students living in the dorms operated in. Could these other companies do the same thing? Yes, but a) not at their current rates (students would not pay $1.60-$1.75 per pound) and b) that's not their focus/interest because they either don't believe it is a viable target market for their service (they're wrong), or their systems aren't build to include another party (reps) in the process, which means at this point they would need to build out more tech.
2) We can charge less than these other companies because our operational costs are lower. Both companies I mentioned (and in fact all competing companies in the space) are taking a top-down approach. They are serving a large area and hoping that they can reach a critical mass for the logistics and economics to make sense. We're taking the opposite, bottom-up approach: first starting in hyper-local, condensed entry markets (college campuses), and then potentially expanding outwards from each campus. This means we start with the logistics and economics making sense, instead of hoping that it gets to that point in the future. This ultimately means we can charge less and still make money since we can batch pickups and deliveries to dorm, college, and potentially neighborhood. An analogy that really hammers home the point: If UPS were to make one delivery per stop (the equivalent of what these other laundry startups are doing), they wouldn't exist. It is the batching that gives you the right margins.
Are colleges going to support this or is going to be like Uber and a fight all the way? :D
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Maker
@Percival Ha, unfortunately I don't have the greatest track record in fighting schools: I got kicked out of housing for converting a kiddie pool into a jacuzzi (bubbles and hot-water jet included), on top of scaffolding. Pics available :-)
The beauty of our model (if I may say so myself) is that we don't need the schools permission to operate. The campus reps are Course Loads employees to us, but to the university they are current students carrying laundry bags out of the dorm to the curb, where we take over.
In my previous experience with reps/schools, the universities have actually been eager to offer the job opportunities to students via their career center job postings and some business programs have actually agreed to internship credit. So while there are definitely ways we can work with the universities, clubs, athletics, we don't need them and they can't break the model.
Why 500 and what do you hope to get out of the program?
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Maker
@Percival I really like that 500 is about distribution and not just about the tech. While we do have some big plans for the tech, right now we are focused on iteration and growth. Once an infrastructure is in place (which it is), it's all about acquisition, growth, and scalability. We're not building a tech product, but rather a product that is enabled by tech, and I think that is a distinction 500 gets.
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